now come forth. The small and the great had been in it, and the small
were as safe as the great; the creeping thing of the ditch or the hedge,
as free of all danger or harm as Noah himself. Precious mystery! We may
be little, and we are little, as the heart knows full well; but heaven,
or the coming system of glory, has fitted itself like the ark, for the
receiving of the small as well as the great. "A voice came out of the
throne, saying, Praise our God, all ye His servants, and ye that fear
Him, both small and great." We may be calm, though we know ourselves to
be "small" in every way, even as the creeping thing that went in with
Noah--for such a little one was equally in the covenant, or "the family
settlement," which made each and all, in their way and measure,
inheritors of the new world. The Father's house on high has surely made
its reckoning according to these differences of "small and great." As in
ancient days of typical glory, all the congregation of Israel, the
distant ones of Dan and Naphtali, as well as the princes of Judah,
joined in the shout of triumph when the fire came down, and in mystery,
the kingdom was entered. Lev. ix. Clement and others were not Paul in
the measure of their labours, or in the energy of the Spirit; but they
were Paul as having their names, alike with his, in the book of life.
Phil. iv. 3. The Father has built His house in the heavens, on the very
plan of its receiving the saints as well as Jesus Himself. It was part
of the original design. Ere foundations were laid, that plan and purpose
were laid. In counsels of everlasting love it was provided that the
house should be a large one, a many-roomed or mansioned house, that all
the children might be there.
What say we, beloved? Do our thoughts of it and glances at it do justice
to this love of God? As well might you say, your prospect from the
highest of the hills could do justice to God's creation. Could your
glance then measure the ten thousandth part of the earth? The length,
the depth, the breadth, the height--the love of Christ which passeth
knowledge!
"And Noah builded an altar unto the Lord; and took of every clean beast,
and every clean fowl, and offered burnt offerings on the altar. And the
Lord smelled a sweet savour: and the Lord said in His heart, I will not
again curse the ground any more for man's sake; for the imagination of
man's heart is evil from his youth: neither will I again smite any more
every thing living, as I have done. While the earth remaineth, seed time
and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and
night, shall not cease." The cleansing of the waters of judgment had
made no change in the imaginations of the thoughts of man's heart. They
were still evil, and that only. The heart was uncured, for "that which
is born of the flesh is flesh," though there be water to cleanse or fire
to refine. It was no change there which gave the Lord thoughts of peace
and not of evil towards men.
"Faith eyes the blood of Christ, and not victory over corruptions," as
one has said, even where there is such victory. But here, _in spite of
corruptions_, that blood awakens thoughts of peace and not of evil, to
give the sinner an expected end. Christ was under the eye of God, and
that was enough; as in the day of atonement. The blood of sprinkling is
then seen everywhere. That was the great secret, the great principle, of
that mystic day in Israel. The blood of the lamb (Lev. xvi.) went into
the presence of God, attended by a cloud of incense; so that Aaron
himself was hid, and there was no man in the tabernacle of the
congregation, as the holy service of putting the blood on every thing
proceeded. Christ in mystery was seen, and nothing else--and the fruit
of that was the bearing away of sins into the wilderness, a land not
inhabited, a place of forgetfulness, where there was no voice to accuse,
to judge, or to condemn, where nothing _could_ be heard but the voice of
that blood which speaketh better things than the blood of Abel.
That blood, now under the eye of the Lord God, had moved His heart. Do I
speak as a man? No, the word is, "The Lord said in His heart, I will not
again curse the ground." As the Saviour Himself says (in spirit bound
for the altar), "Therefore doth my Father _love_ me, because I lay down
my life." The heart of the Lord God has sealed the acceptance of the
sacrifice. It did so here, in the times of Noah.
This word that broke from the heart of the Lord God in Noah's day, the
passage of the burning lamp in Abraham's day (Gen. xv.), and the answer
of God to Solomon (2 Chron. i.), all witness to the value of the cross
of Christ with God established. The rending of the veil from top to
bottom, the breaking of the rocks, and the bursting of the graves,
witness the same, when the true offering was once and for ever
accomplished. In rich variety of form and character is the acceptance of
the work done in "the place that is called Calvary" testified and
published--in every tongue and language, as it were, in Hebrew, and
Greek, and Latin.
And Noah becomes at once the object of fresh and multiplied blessings,
blessings in glory and inheritance now, as already he had blessings in
election, an acceptance of grace and the righteousness which is by
faith. "God blessed Noah and his sons, and said unto them, Be fruitful,
and multiply, and replenish the earth. And the fear of you, and the
dread of you, shall be upon every beast of the earth, and upon every
fowl of the air, upon all that moveth upon the earth, and upon all the
fishes of the sea: into your hand they are delivered."
Noah was blessed in the new world. That blessing conveyed to him
property and dominion in the earth, and the use or enjoyment of the
creatures good for food. "Every moving thing that liveth" was given to
him, that it might be meat for him.
Here was a large grant, as wide as the scene which lay around him. He
was monarch of all he surveyed, lord, like Adam in the garden, of the
new world. Instructed, however, as well as honoured and enriched--taught
that the _blood_ of the animal was not to be eaten with its _flesh_:
"the flesh with the blood thereof, which is the life thereof, thou shalt
not eat"--a principle which involves all the thoughts and counsels of
God in His way with sinners--as suited a prohibition, or limitation to
the grant made to Noah now, as had been the prohibition of the tree in
the midst of the garden, to the grant of all things else made to Adam.
The blood was the life, and man was not to eat it. It would have been a
bold re-assuming of that which through sin he had lost, a challenge to
regain life by forcing the passage kept by the sword of the cherubim.
For this ordinance told the sinner, that having lost his title to the
tree of life, he can never return to it in his own strength. The life
has reverted to God. Blood is His. And the gospel comes to tell us how
He has used it, even providing with it and through it new, eternal,
infallible life for the dead sinner.
The way of God in the gospel was, therefore, rehearsed to Noah in this
ordinance: "The flesh with the blood thereof, which is the life thereof,
thou shalt not eat." His altar had already told us that he stood with
Adam in the faith of the woman's Seed, and that that mystery was the
principle of his religion and his worship. But here, while making over
every thing to him for property, dominion, and use, the Lord will not
pass by this great exception out of the grant; conveying, as it does,
the great secret or principle of His gospel. In the changed
circumstances of Adam and Noah, in the difference between an upright
creature and a ruined sinner, this exception was as fitting and
necessary, as I have said, as that of the tree of knowledge out of the
grant of all with which the Lord, the Creator, had of old, furnished and
filled the scene.
We take life from Christ who has made atonement by His blood. But we
deeply own we can get it nowhere else. _We do not look for it elsewhere,
but we refuse it not from Him._ We know we were dead in trespasses and
sins, but we know that we have life in Him, though only in Him. Adam
learnt these things in the promise of the woman's Seed, and in the sword
of the cherubim; Noah learnt them or witnessed them in his altar and in
this ordinance; these things the whole book of God declares; and
eternity will celebrate them.
Further, however, still--for in this blessing we find Noah with the
sword of justice in his hand. His fellow-man was to be both protected
and avenged. Man's person was sacred; and his life or blood, if shed by
either man or beast, would be required. "And surely your blood of your
lives will I require; at the hand of every beast will I require it, and
at the hand of man; at the hand of every man's brother, will I require
the life of man. Whoso sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be
shed."[6]
[6] It has been justly said by another, that the principle of
_government_ was represented in Noah; that Adam had been the
representative head of _creation_, and that Noah is the same now
of _government_. And I doubt not, that after the judicial
scattering from Babel, the nations became associations in which
God still recognized the sword of justice and the seat of
government, which therefore are still to be exercised, and ought
still to be religiously owned and reverenced.
Who does not instinctively approve of this? All that we feel judges the
fitness of thus treating the person of man as sacred. While every other
moving thing that lived was submitted to the use of man, his fellow-man
was to be sacred in his eyes.
We instinctively approve this. But this scripture accounts for this
instinct. The reason lies here--"in the image of God made He man." There
is a dignity in man that is entirely his own. He is the natural head of
creation. Man is the possessor and governor, and not part of the
conveyed inheritance, or of the delegated dominion. He is the object and
not the subject of the divine grant. The instinctive verdict of our own
hearts is thus divinely accounted for.
After this, however, a great subject opens before us. "With thee will I
establish my covenant" had been God's word to Noah, before the ark was
made, or the waters had come. vi. 18. Now that the judgment is past, and
the new earth is inherited, that covenant is fully detailed, as well as
pledged again to God's elect. ix. 8-17. And it is here that the word
"covenant" is first used. The covenants of which we read in Scripture
are all specific, having their parties and their objects well defined
and plainly declared. There is no mistaking of them. Whether it be this
covenant of the earth with Noah, the covenant with Abraham and his seed,
the covenant of priesthood with Phinehas, or that of the throne with
David, all is defined--the parties are declared and the objects set
forth. Nor do these, nor any of them, I surely judge, contemplate the
peculiar calling of the Church. Spiritual calling in heavenly places,
and the results of oneness with Christ, are neither described nor
conveyed by them. But the Scriptures of the New Testament abundantly
declare a _purpose_, or a counsel, of God according to the good pleasure
of His will; a mystery hid in God, before the foundation of the world,
in which the Church is directly interested. See Romans xvi. 25; 1 Cor.
ii. 7; Eph. i. 9; iii. 8-11; Col. i. 26; 1 Tim. ii. 9.
The inquiry may arise, Does this purpose or counsel take the form of a
covenant? Let us call it covenant, or simply a purpose taken of God;
still the great and holy and august transaction itself is richly found
in the New Testament. But has it, we may still ask, the character of a
covenant?
I would not be careful to say that it is ever called so; but I believe
we may say, that many things of a covenant nature are intimated as
attaching to it. Promises are made, consideration or price contemplated,
arrangements formed and fixed, and all this as between distinct parties.
"In the volume of the book it is written of Me"--"I was set up from
everlasting"--and such words of deepest and holiest import have their
place in settling these thoughts that arise. And not only were our
election, and appointment to our peculiar glory, as in predestination,
matters before the world (Rom. viii. 28, 29; Eph. i. 4, 5; 1 Peter i.
2), but we were then formally or virtually given by the Father to
Christ. John vi. 37, 39; x. 29; xvii. 1, 6, 8, 9, 11.
And eternal life is declared to have been promised before the world
was--language which intimates Christ as a party to a blessed transaction
then, and one that has covenant character in it. Titus i. 2.
I do not, then, say that this transaction is called a covenant, as God's
dealing with Noah is, and His dealing with Abraham, with David, and with
Phinehas; but it has these qualities, or this form of a covenant; the
presence of distinct parties, considerations and purposes all settled,
and the whole confirmed and acted on. And how does the spirit of a saint
welcome the blessed truth of this great eternal transaction, engaging
all the Godhead in the behalf of our souls!--as we read, among other
passages, "elect according to the foreknowledge of God the Father,
through sanctification of the Spirit unto obedience and sprinkling of
the blood of Jesus Christ."[7]
[7] As intimating blessed and distinct actions among the Persons of
the Godhead, according to covenant arrangements, we may remember
Messiah's words in Isa. xlviii.--"And now hath the Lord God and
His Spirit sent me." What words! how full of deep, counselled, and
ordered grace towards sinners! And they are quite according to the
structure of things in the Gospels--for there not only does the
baptism of Jesus but many passages tell us or show us, according
to this word of the prophet, that the mission and ministry of the
Lord Jesus were under the ordaining of God and the anointing of
the Holy Ghost;--the Lord God and His Spirit sent the Son, the
Christ or Messiah.
But what strong foundations are these! what wondrous discoveries of
grace! God Himself, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, in counsel and in
action for us! In the Gospel, man is in the place of _vision and
audience only_. It is _God_ that is active. The activities and
sacrifices are _God's_, and the sinner has but to hear and live, to look
and be saved. But these doings of God in the gospel of His grace, are
the fruit (as we thus see) of precious and wondrous counsels, taken in
Himself ere worlds were framed. And what, I ask, can surpass this? Can
title or stability for a sinner, such as may allay all motion and
uneasiness of conscience, be conceived beyond what he gets in this?
Doings for him by God, and sacrifices made for him, and all this
according to counsels ere worlds began! A sinner made happy (may I use
this word?) at God's expense!
It is covenant or counselled service that Jesus has rendered us. A
promise is made to Noah, that the waters shall not again prevail to
destroy the earth, but this promise rests on the strong foundation of
the blood of a covenant. Noah's altar had already sent up a sweet
savour, a savour of rest, to God, and in the satisfaction and delight of
that the Lord had said, I will not again curse the ground for man's
sake. That blood was the foundation of the promise. Just as with Abraham
afterwards. The land is promised to him, but it is by the covenant of
Him who passes through the pieces of the sacrifice. No _promised_
blessing that is not a _purchased_ blessing also--no throne of grace, as
we have said before, that does not stay itself on the ark of the
covenant. Gen. xv. 17.
But the covenant comes with its seal, as well as with its blood. As
here. There is _the bow which witnesses it_ as well as _the blood which
sustains it_. Wondrous thoughts keep themselves before the soul in all
this! The foundation and the witness, the blood and the token, the
consideration and the attestation of the great act and deed of God come
to mind here. The like figure whereunto even circumcision afterwards;
for as the bow in the cloud, so circumcision in the flesh, is a sign of
covenant engagements.
All such signs, however, beautiful and sure as they may be, are lost
when we think of the great original. For it is the Holy Ghost Himself
that is now given as the great sign, the seal of our adoption, the
earnest of our inheritance, the witness of the accomplished work of
Jesus, and of the acceptance of it in all its sufficiency and
preciousness.
What thoughts are these! The promise of God sustained by the blood of
the Son, and witnessed by the presence of the Spirit! How has God
imparted Himself to us in this marvellous act and deed for sinners! The
soul can conceive nothing richer. In divine activities we are
interested, but such activities as are founded on everlasting counsels,
and which make manifest to us and for us the name of God, "Father, Son,
and Holy Ghost."
How should it take us out of ourselves, to stand in sight of this! What
a mystery it is; and what have we to do, but with Moses to "turn aside
and see this great sight," turn aside from all else! The grander "this
great sight" presents itself to our eye, the more commanding will it be.
Let us get rich thoughts of this mystery. "The secret of the Lord is
with them that fear Him, and He will shew them His covenant." Let us see
this great transaction settled ere worlds began, see it calling forth
all the energies of divine love and power in Father, Son, and Holy
Ghost, see it undertaking the most deep and marvellous purposes of grace
and glory for the elect, keep the eye on it, like Moses, till, like him,
we discover Him who dwells in the midst of it, and whose name explains
it all.
"Oh, all ye rich, ye wise, ye just,
Who the blood's doctrine have discussed
And judge it mean and slight--
Grant that I may, the rest's your own,
In shame and poverty sit down
At this one well-spring of delight!"
If it be but a man's covenant, there is both the consideration and the
deed, the purchase money and the muniments, the price and the witness of
its payment. God treats with our souls in language thus well understood,
and tells us thus of the _consideration_ and the _deed_, or that which
_sustains_ and that which _witnesses_ the counsels of His sovereign good
pleasure. It is a deed of gift to the elect, but it is nothing less than
the blood of the Son which sustains it, and the presence of the Spirit
which witnesses it.
What a secret! By nature I am at a great distance from God, an alien and
a foreigner. I am also shut up, so that I cannot come forth. But in this
great transaction God Himself undertook to travel this unmeasured
distance, and assail the house of my strong enemy; and in His
incarnation, sorrows, and victory all this mighty doing of love is
accomplished, and I am "compassed about with songs of deliverance."
Can it be, as I gaze at such a mystery, that I fear lest the distant one
be not brought nigh, or the captive one be not delivered? "Surely in the
floods of great waters they shall not come nigh unto me." I may
say--"_Thou_ art my hiding-place; thou shalt preserve me from trouble;
thou shalt compass me about with songs of deliverance."
"Strong Deliverer!
Be Thou still our strength and shield!"
This may well be our confidence in the faith of such truth. But to these
general thoughts on the covenants and their signs, I might add, the
token given to Noah has a beautiful significancy. The bow, as it were,
rode triumphant on the cloud. It rolled away the stone and sat upon it.
Its form and bearing were those of a conqueror. It said to the cloud,
"Hitherto shalt thou come and no further, and here shall thy proud waves
be stayed." It gave the angel of death his measure, and said to him, "It
is enough, stay now thine hand."
And all this lives in the divine remembrance. The earth and the covenant
that secures it are there. "The bow shall be in the cloud, and I will
look upon it, that I may remember the everlasting covenant between God
and every living creature of all flesh that is upon the earth."
Accordingly this promise to the earth is remembered, the bow in the
cloud is looked at, through every stage and variety of the
dispensational actings of the Lord.
It was remembered, of course, all the time the Lord had His seat in
Zion, for then the glory made _the earth_ its residence. The Lord then
dwelt between the cherubim, in the temple at Jerusalem, in the land of
Israel. But when the throne of the Lord leaves that city, and the
sanctuary loses the glory, because abominations had grieved and
disturbed it, the throne and the glory are accompanied by the rainbow to
heaven. Ezek. i. 28. Though the earth then ceased, for a while, to be
the dwelling-place of God, still it was before Him in counsel. He would
be mindful of it, as the object of His faithful care, according to the
promise.[8]
[8] Just like the throne of David. That throne is for the present in
the dust--the crown of Judah is cast down--but the promise of the
Lord to it is remembered, as is His promise to the earth. This
analogy Scripture giveth us in Jer. xxxiii. Dishonoured now or
made the sport of the wicked, the promises to the earth and to
David's throne are still in full remembrance, and, in their
season, will be accomplished.
And therefore when heaven is opened to our view, we see the faithful and
remembered bow encompassing the throne. Rev. iv. And further still. The
rainbow is seen when the Lord is presented as coming down for the
direct, immediate execution of judgment. The mighty angel, the divine
executor of the day of the Lord, comes down to the earth clothed with a
cloud, the symbol of judgment, and the fearful vessel of wrath. Gen. ix.
14; Rev. i. 7. But even then the rainbow is with Him (Rev. x.); as much
as to tell us, that to the end, and at the end, God remembers His
promise to the earth, and will debate with judgment. The cloud is to
descend, it is true--"They shall see the Son of man coming in the clouds
of heaven." The judgment must sit--the books must be opened--the vials
must be emptied; but it is only to take out of the kingdom them that
offend--to destroy them that destroy the earth. The cloud, as it
executes its commission, must stay itself at the beginning of the bow.
The _day_ of the Lord, or the judgment, must give place to the
_presence_ of the Lord, or the refreshment and restoration. Time shall
be no longer, the mighty angel may cry; the present course of things may
cease again, as once it did in the days of Noah; but the bow shines, in
the eye of the Lord, as brightly as ever, and His promise lives in His
heart. The earth is still beloved, for Noah's sake, as Israel is for the
fathers' sake--that true Noah, in whom (but in whom alone) all the
promises of God are yea and amen; and of whom it shall be said, in all
its fulness and truth, "This same shall comfort us concerning our work
and toil of our hands, because of the ground which the Lord hath
cursed."
This earth of ours, given to the children of men, therefore outlives the
judgment. It stands the shock of the descent of the mighty angel, though
clothed with a cloud, planting his right foot on the sea, and his left
on the earth, and crying aloud, as when a lion roareth. Rev. x.
And what is it reserved for? For more than the bow had promised it. It
is not only preserved--with its seed time and harvest, its summer and
winter, its day and night, its cold and heat--but it is to be delivered
into "the liberty of the glory of the children of God." This is more
than had been promised.
Such was the token, and such will be its acknowledgment--such was the
pledge, and such will be its redemption. Beautiful mystery! The
covenant, with its blood and its sign! God's promise, with the sacrifice
of the Son as its foundation, and the presence of the Spirit as its
witness!
But here this thought occurs to me: Are we, beloved, to stand before
such ways and revelations of God in the same calmness in which they are
delivered to us? Is that the thing that becomes us? The Queen of Sheba
did not stand before the glories of Solomon in the same way that Solomon
himself dwelt among them. Solomon was at home in the midst of them. They
were all his own. It was _his_ wisdom, and _his_ house that he had
built. The meat of the table, and the sitting of the servants, with
their apparel, were all _his_. The ascent by which he went into the
house of God was his. But the Queen of Sheba, from the distant south,
was but introduced to it all. Fitting it was that he should be at ease
there; and fitting it was that she should be all rapture. So with the
book of God and the disciple. All the profound and precious mysteries
which the Spirit is unfolding there are His own--the thoughts and
counsels of the divine mind. There is no effort to produce effect in the
communication of them; the tale of the wonders of grace and glory is
told artlessly. But is the soul, introduced to them, to be, in like
manner, unmoved? Such an one may rather gaze with more of rapture than
she who came from the uttermost parts of the earth, for "a greater than
Solomon is here."